European Characters Research Articles

The Strawpeople of Russian, Eastern European, and Soviet History in English-Language TV and Film

Abstract This special issue features historical scholars of imperial Russia and the Soviet Union analyzing representations of Russian and East European characters and history in contemporary Anglophone television and films, such as The Americans, Black Widow, The Great, For All Mankind, and Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. They identify several tropes that shore up Anglosphere conceptions of progressiveness, liberalism, feminism, and even whiteness in ways that put pressure on geopolitics today, which some have characterized as a second Cold War. Gender and sexuality are dominant themes through which difference between the West and Eastern Europe is commonly staged onscreen. Debate emerges on whether this is a return to twentieth-century thinking or a new vision of Russian and East European otherness.

Disorienting the Native Struggle for Independence: A Postcolonial Reading of Leila Slimani's Historical Novel, The Country of Others

Novels can both reinforce colonialism and undermine liberation movements, especially when they echo colonial narratives. This dynamic is critically examined in Leila Slimani's historical novel, "The Country of Others," through a postcolonial close reading approach. The novel's depiction of France's colonialism in Morocco is presented in a misleading light. It offers a stark contrast in character portrayal: European characters are depicted as agents of a “civilizing mission,” with aspirations to bring prosperity, good health, and education to Moroccans. This portrayal not only feeds into a narrative of cultural superiority, depicting Europeans as emotionally complex and culturally advanced, but also subtly suggests benevolence in their colonial endeavors. Conversely, indigenous Moroccan characters are shown in a more one-dimensional and negative manner, often associated with violence, particularly against women. Furthermore, the novel intertwines Morocco's struggle for national independence with contemporary discourses on Islamic extremism, casting this historical fight less as a pursuit of freedom and more as an aggressive and antagonistic movement.

Imaginary worlds: Karl May and the refugees

ABSTRACT Linhard’s article shows how the imaginary worlds of German pulp author Karl May (1842–1912) appear in the memories of Jewish and anti-fascist refugees who found asylum in the Americas. Yet the refugees were not the only ones who had once been avid readers of May’s fictions: his novels were just as appealing to supporters of fascism, even, some claim, to Hitler himself. May’s novels are built on racialized and gendered imaginaries that made them equally suitable for those who saw indigenous cultures in the Americas as ultimately inferior and in need of guidance from the European characters, and those who brought with them romantic visions of still racialized, yet benevolent and noble natives. These visions bear no relationship to indigenous cultures in Latin America and instead are transposed from beliefs and tropes about the ‘Indians’ featured in the adventures of Winnetou and Old Shatterhand. Writers forced into exile, among them Leo Spitzer, Klaus Mann, Gertrude Duby and Egon Erwin Kisch, wrote about the ways in which reading May shaped how they once saw the Americas. The traces of May’s influence in the writings of displaced Jews and anti-fascists reveal a certain blindness to colonial racism that, while characteristic of the times when these authors came of age, was still part of world-views that many were not ready to challenge. Understanding the impact of the work of a man who called his novels ‘travel narratives’ (even though he never visited the places he claimed to be writing about) brings us one step closer to understanding more about the inner lives of Holocaust refugees in the colonial world.

A Postcolonial Reading of Donald Sinderby’s The Jewel of Malabar: An Analysis of Colonial Engagement in Twentieth-Century Malabar

Abstract Several historical accounts of colonialists’ entanglements in Malabar have been recorded. Colonialist historiography aimed to popularize the achievements of Europeans stationed in the empire. The representation of European characters in The Jewel of Malabar, a novel published in 1927 by the English soldier and writer Donald Ryder Stephens under the pen name Donald Sinderby, accepts the colonizers’ righteous intent of introducing Western culture and religion and the scientific temperament into the colonies. The article argues that a power nexus existed between the colonizers and natives (perceived as elites by various social groups) and shows how the social transactions between the two led to an internalization and proliferation of the need of the white savior. A close analysis of The Jewel of Malabar examines the nature of social transactions between the colonizer and the colonized, and demonstrates the creation of a dependency that is perceived as a symbiotic arrangement, by which some natives are protected from others while giving the colonizers a firmer command of the colony’s resources. Furthermore, the article also explores how Western modernization was used to provide a righteous intent cloaking the colonizers’ motives (conquest and exploitation) while intensifying the existing binary within colonies, that of nondangerous natives needing protection from dangerous ones, with Hindus and Moplahs playing these roles.

The Deprecation of the Non-German Other in Sabine Thiesler’s Novels: Representational Ethics and Popular Literature

ABSTRACT Europe’s North-South divide transcends the fact of divergent economic performances in Northern and Southern European countries; it also steps into the realm of national identities, intra-European perceptions and, ultimately, accountability. A close examination of Sabine Thiesler’s multiple novels shows a persistent and fixated denigration of Southern European characters through the use of demeaning stereotypes and stigmatizations which disregard any moral guidance or representational ethics. Due to the fact that this stigmatization occurs in a literary context branded as trivial, scholars might also tend to trivialize its importance. Nevertheless, a scrutiny of the works of one of the most well-read authors of popular literature in the German language is not only relevant, but also necessary in a time when the North-South divide in Europe has become especially aggravated and when contempt toward the collective other appears to have become, once again, a political tool for nation-building.

African strangers, spaces of belonging and the “democracy to come” in Helon Habila’s Travellers

This article analyses Helon Habila’s Travellers (2019), focusing on its depiction of African migrants in Europe as strangers, as defined by Sara Ahmed in Strange Encounters (2000): those who, in spite of their proximity, are recognized as not belonging or out of place. Following Ahmed, this essay deals with the relation between space and migrant experience in Habila’s novel, in which the configuration of cities such as Berlin and London and of Europe as a whole is presented as characterized by the enforcement of boundaries and spaces of belonging (Ahmed, 2000), so that the African stranger emerges as an undesirable, threatening, foreign element to be feared and expelled. On the other hand, such a logic of defensiveness, homogeneity, and exclusion is partly challenged and undermined in Travellers by acts of resistance carried out by both African and European characters and by acts of domestic hospitality. These acts suggest the disruption of frontiers and borders, and their corresponding sealed and homogeneous spaces (Ahmed, 2000), together with the necessity of exercising hospitality at a collective and political level. As opposed to the configuration of Europe as Fortress Europe, in which identity and community are defined in terms of affiliation to roots, homeland, or race, in Travellers we find thus an appeal to what Jacques Derrida has called the “democracy to come”, a political, always deferred space of unconditional hospitality that opens up to the foreigner and the stranger.

Young Adult Vulnerabilities in the Fiction of a Ugandan Woman Writer

Questions of identity, power, autonomy and vulnerability carry a particular weight in cultures that have emerged from colonialism. Although few writers of fiction focus on the conflicts between African and European characters, a focus on power and marginalisation remains. One category in which this focus may be plainly seen is writing for and about young people. The study’s aim was to analyse young adult fiction written by a Ugandan female author, Barbara Kimenye to investigate this writing to find out how young adult vulnerability is depicted in literature. Although literature targeting young people in Uganda has flourished and though issues of limited representation have been scrutinised in literary studies, like gender discrimination, very limited attention has been accorded young adult representation in literature. This research analyses fiction written by a female author Barbara Kimenye to expand knowledge about the criticism of young adult representation in literature with particular focus on young adult vulnerability in an adult dominated world. The methodology was mainly qualitative research design, where a document analysis method was used to aid analysis and make critical appreciation of the fictional works. The study investigated the state of young adult characters in literature with special focus on their vulnerability.

Exploring the Eurocentric Heart: A Postcolonial Reading of Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter

A literary text can be a propagator of values- both explicitly and implicitly. As Edward Said claims in his book, Orientalism (1978), for centuries Eurocentrism pervades Western literary pieces; they somehow justify and/or uplift European values and perspectives as superior ones while portraying lands, people and cultures of the colonized nations elsewhere, especially in the East. Sometimes, it may become more oblique as the apparent issues dominating the text seem to be something very different, but the writing, however, in the undercurrent, portrays things in a Eurocentric way, often by “othering” the non-Europeans. Said famously terms, this process of creation of an alter ego of the West in the East as “Orientalism”. Graham Greene’s novel, The Heart of the Matter (1948), set in West Africa’s Sierra Leone, a then British colony during WWII, summons rethinking of its presentation of the non-White people and the land of Africa. This study would like to take the focus away from the dominating themes of religion, sin, pity, mercy, responsibility, love, etc. in this piece of fiction to assess its underlying colonial issues which often go unnoticed. The novel portrays a variety of characters- both the British colonizers and the colonial subjects- though the roles and space occupied by the non-British characters are mostly marginal. The “Whites” are portrayed sympathetically, whereas the “non-Whites” are presented as evil, naïve, weak and mystic. This study, thus, argues that the portrayal of Africa (Sierra Leone), the Africans, and the major “non-White” characters in the novel, in contrast to the empathetic presentation of the major “White” European characters, indicate an obvious “othering” of “non-Whites” and the marginalization of non-Europeans in the narrative of the novel. The paper further opines that this process of “othering” and marginalization underlines the operation of an underlying Eurocentric attitude in the representation of the Europeans and non-Europeans in Greene’s fiction.

Transmedia storytelling and transmediated bodies in Fullmetal Alchemist (2017)

Hagane no Renkinjutsushi (Fullmetal Alchemist) (2001, Hagaren in short) is a Japanese comic book franchise that not only expanded into a larger supersystem through its transmedia storytelling on multimedia platforms, but also through the global fandom of cosplay (the Japanese term for costume play), a form of popular culture that is heavily promoted by the Japanese government’s Cool Japan policy. Hagaren is set in an unidentifiable European landscape, a common depiction in many Japanese manga and anime, yet, in the 2017 live-action film that was globally distributed on Netflix, audiences witness a full Japanese cast performing European characters. This cross-racial performance, or yellow washing, challenges the border-crossing narrative and global viewership of the Hagaren’s manga and anime franchise. By examining how Hagaren’s supersystem developed out of the interplays of media industries, fan culture and broader governmental policies, this article aims to excavate the multifaceted politics of not only cross-border consumer identities, but also cross-racial performances propagated by the transmediation of Japanese popular culture on the global stage.

Gifts of welcome: Precarity, intimacy and the gift in Die Farbe des Ozeans (Peren, 2011) and Welcome (Lioret, 2009)

Abstract This article examines the role of Europe as gift in Lioret's Welcome (2009) and Peren's Die Farbe des Ozeans (2011) by focusing on gestures of welcome extended by white European characters to undocumented migrants. In both films, these gestures include gifts, in the form of money, shelter or skills taught, that play an important narrative role, but subordinate refugee characters' lives and stories to the emotional needs of white European 'givers'. In this way gifts of welcome become violent acts that reinforce European assumptions about European political and epistemological superiority, and paper over the existence of colonial and racist violence that continues to produce precarious lives.

The Representation of Oriental Others in Haydn’s L’incontro improvviso

This paper examines the musical Orientalism and representation of Oriental Others in Haydn’s seraglio opera, L’incontro improvviso. In seraglio opera, one of the Turkish-themed musical genres of “Turcomania” that swept Europe in the eighteenth century, Oriental Others were defined by their supposed negative human traits such as slyness, crudeness or irrationality. Alla turca topos in L’incontro, as in other seraglio operas, are extensively used to accentuate the inferiority of Others, their customs or religions. The representation of Others demonstrates little ethical complexity, exhibiting a stark dichotomy between morally upright Westerners and unsophisticated Others with dubious morals. I argue that despite presenting no European characters dueling with Others and thus foregoing such a narrative format as “East meets West on stage,” Haydn’s L’incontro is, nonetheless, more diminishing in its portrayal of Others than in most seraglio operas: even the male protagonist is among the degraded Others who are usually subplot characters from a low social echelon. No “rescuer,” the protagonist in L’incontro is rendered as an incompetent figure. Ali’s unmanly stature is further highlighted by the active, counter-stereotypical Oriental heroine, Rezia, who is presented as a foil to emphasize the inadequacy of Ali. The ultimate male Other, the Sultan, suffers equally from a weak stage presence despite fulfilling his role as a conveyer of Enlightenment ideals in a typical lieto fine of Turkish opera.

Medievalist Comics and the American Century by Chris Bishop

Reviewed by: Medievalist Comics and the American Century by Chris Bishop Marina Gerzić Bishop, Chris, Medievalist Comics and the American Century, Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2017; hardback; pp. 224; R.R.P. US $65.00; ISBN 9781496808509. Chris Bishop's new book examines the literary and historic roots of American comics, and how these works of popular culture use medieval European characters to reflect modern American history. The volume features an introduction and conclusion, and seven chapters, each focusing on an individual comic title: Prince Valiant (1937); The Green Arrow (1941); The Mighty Thor (1962); Conan the Barbarian (1970); Red Sonja (1973); Beowulf: Dragon Slayer (1975); and Northlanders (2007). Bishop's introduction provides an excellent overview of the history of comic books and the concept of popular medievalism as a genre, and he states that his focus is chiefly to contextualize the texts studied, rather than interpret them. Medievalist Comics and the American Century is successful as an elaborated reception study of a selection of comics published in America from the late 1930s until more recent times (2007). Bishop's discussion of the comics is largely descriptive rather than analytical, providing detailed publication histories. To this effect, he outlines connections between publishers (such as the looming figure of tycoon William Randolph Hearst) and the authors (such as Hal Foster) and artists (such as Howard Pyle and Newell Convers Wyeth) who would go on to influence and popularize the idea of medievalism in the United States in the twentieth century and beyond. Surprisingly, Bishop does not overly engage with medievalism, declaring that, 'while [m]edievalism will inform the discourse' of his study, 'reception history' is '[his] primary objective' (p. 6), before quite flippantly reducing the difference between medievalism and neo-medievalism to mere semantics (p. 12). A more thorough engagement with both medievalist and neo-medievalist theory would have strengthened Bishop's work, especially in his final chapter on Northlanders. The first three chapters examine the immigration of Arthurian legends, Robin Hood, and Viking lore into the United States. Bishop presents Prince Valiant, DC's Green Arrow, and Marvel's The Mighty Thor as products of a rich engagement with this medievalist culture and history. He traces each work, from academic interest in the medieval, to transmission to the general public through immigrant culture, and then finally its adaptation and popularization in the comic form. [End Page 149] The next two chapters focus on Marvel's barbarian warriors Conan and Red Sonja. Bishop outlines how Conan the Barbarian was resurrected from pulp-fiction obscurity and buoyed along on the wave of interest in fantasy literature that started with J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Bishop frames Red Sonja as a response to America's feminist movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, with major comics publishers such as Marvel and DC realizing they needed strong female characters. However, a backlash against feminism led to a (problematic) revision of Sonja's backstory (p. 140), an example of the 'Women in Refrigerators' trope that continues to be used in comic storylines today. The final two chapters focus on two titles by publisher DC. Bishop's interest in Beowulf: Dragon Slayer is primarily as an example of failed medievalist work compared with Prince Valiant, Green Arrow, Thor, Conan, and Red Sonja. It lasted a mere six issues, failed to excite the public's imagination, and has 'never taken root in the popular conscious of America' (p. 160). Northlanders, another failed medievalist work—Bishop terms it an 'unmedievalist' comic book(p. 164)—resulted from author Brian Wood's struggles with his publisher Vertigo. An imprint of DC, Vertigo wanted a series based on Silver Age comic character the Viking Prince, whilst Wood was more inclined to write a Japanese neo-noir gangster saga. However, in taking Tokyo gang stories and setting them in old Iceland, Bishop neglects to see Northlanders not as a failed medievalist work, but as a perfect example of a neo-medievalist text: it is set in a pseudo-medieval world, and playfully engages with, and interrogates, medieval history and culture. Bishop's writing style is clear and concise, and the book includes endnotes, a bibliography, and index...

Writing Indigenous Vampires: Aboriginal Gothic or Aboriginal Fantastic?

The usual postmodern suspicions about diligently deciphering authorial intent or stridently seeking fixed meaning/s and/or binary distinctions in an artistic work aside, this self-indulgent essay pushes the boundaries regarding normative academic research, for it focusses on my own (minimally celebrated) published creative writing’s status as a literary innovation. Dedicated to illuminating some of the less common denominators at play in Australian horror, my paper recalls the creative writing process involved when I set upon the (arrogant?) goal of creating a new genre of creative writing: that of the ‘Aboriginal Fantastic’. I compare my work to the literary output of a small but significant group (2.5% of the population), of which I am a member: Aboriginal Australians. I narrow my focus even further by examining that creative writing known as Aboriginal horror. And I reduce the sample size of my study to an exceptionally small number by restricting my view to one type of Aboriginal horror literature only: the Aboriginal vampire novel, a genre to which I have contributed professionally with the 2011 paperback and 2012 e-book publication of That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! However, as this paper hopefully demonstrates, and despite what may be interpreted by some cynical commentators as the faux sincerity of my taxonomic fervour, Aboriginal horror is a genre noteworthy for its instability and worthy of further academic interrogation. (first paragraph)

“The German, the Sclave, and the Semite”

This essay contributes to George Eliot scholarship by examining the author’s interest in Eastern Europe, which spanned the length of her literary career, and its portrayal in her fiction. It situates Eliot’s Eastern European characters—from the minor ones, such as Countess Czerlaski’s late husband in “The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton” (1857), to major protagonists, such as Will Ladislaw of Middlemarch (1871–72)—in the context of England’s policy toward Poland vis-à-vis Russia during the course of the nineteenth century. The international political backdrop is especially useful in illuminating the Polish aspect of Middlemarch, whose publication date and the time period the novel covers (1829–32) happen to coincide with or shortly follow the two major insurrections Poland launched against Russia. Drawing on Eliot’s interactions with Slavic Jews in Germany, the essay shows how the creation of Will Ladislaw and his reprisal in the character of Herr Klesmer in Daniel Deronda (1876) serves the purposes of Eliot’s imagined cure for English insularity.

Russian exploration, from Siberia to space: a history

In the history of geographical discovery and exploration, a well-known cast of European characters and events takes center stage. While the importance of achievements by Columbus, Cortes, Magellan, Cook, Lewis and Clark, and Neil Armstrong remains unassailable, the participation of Russia in the European era of exploration, conquest, expansion, and colonization deserves equal attention. This study provides a narrative survey and critical analysis of a rich but overlooked tradition of geographical exploration by Russians and others in Russian service since 1580. Following Russian pioneers across Siberia, Alaska, Brazil, Hawaii and the Pacific, Central Asia, Australasia, the Arctic and Antarctic, and into space, this work establishes Russia in the history of world exploration and connects the Russian experience of exploration to Russian national identity past and present.

A Brief Conversation with Richard Mason

notebook photo : michael lionstar Richard Mason’s first novel, The Drowning People, published when he was twenty-one, sold more than a million copies worldwide and won Italy’s Grinzane Cavour Prize for Best First Novel. Born in South Africa in 1978, he is also the author of Natural Elements, which the Washington Post chose as one of the best books of 2009. In 1999 Mason, with Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, started the Kay Mason Foundation (www.kaymasonfoundation.org), which helps disadvantaged South Africans access quality education. WLT: The South African hillside where you sometimes live and farm sounds quite unlike the first-class accommodations Piet Barol pursued in History of a Pleasure Seeker. How did you end up there? Richard Mason: When Piet Barol reached South Africa, I knew I could not continue his story. I knew what happened to him, but I did not know the people among whom it happened. I wanted to bring the richness of South Africa’s Xhosa society to life— with the confidence I had brought to the European characters in History of a Pleasure Seeker. As a white child raised in South Africa under the Apartheid regime, it was impossible for me to render truthfully a story that involved black Africans. There was only one thing to do: leave my comfortable nineteenth-century house in Scotland and go live in the rural Eastern Cape. WLT: What is a typical day there like for you? RM: Nowadays, my day at Lulutho begins on a red pullout chair. I wake in a tent with a mud floor and a desk made at Lulutho itself by Lubaballo and Landu, the two young men who trained as carpenters during the project ’s early phases. In my tent is a piano on a wooden pallet to protect it from dampness, bought for 150 euros and transported on a lorry from Cape Town. It is a wonderful piano, though very out of tune because I have not yet had the energy to entice a tuner all the way from East London, which is the nearest large town. Interestingly, the highest note in one of my favorite Chopin waltzes is still in tune—which makes me feel like the instrument is meant to be here, and forgives my ill treatment of him. If it’s cold, I put on an extra two layers. If it’s hot, shorts and boots. (You don’t wear flip-flops because of the snakes.) Up to the shoddily built wooden hut that serves as our kitchen, where Sibusiso (one of Cape Town’s best chefs, tempted by me to join us on an adventure and give up his Michelin-starred kitchen for a wooden hut) makes breakfast. He is used to a twelve-burner stove. At Lulutho, he has two gas burners and three feet of counter space to cook for as many as thirty people three times a day. Twice a week or so, I fill a black bag with hot water, leave it in the sun, and take it down to a tree-shower for A Brief Conversation with Richard Mason City Profile: Marrakech, page 06 What to Read Now: Migration Narratives, page 07 New Books: Writers and Their Cities, page 08 july – august 2012 5 6 World Literature Today photo : michael camilleri notebook H istory and modernity meet in Marrakech. Ancient mosques loom over new museums, and twisted alleyways lead to vibrant souks in this city whose names include “the Ochre City” and “Land of God.” And with its snowcapped Atlas Mountains, and foothills, and its proximity to the Sahara Desert, Marrakech is an example of striking topological variation. The city’s history dates back to the Roman era, when Roman legions clashed with the Kingdom of Mauretania in 40 bce. The kingdom grew with the fall of the Roman Empire, and by the Middle Ages, various dynasties built edifices that still stand today in this city whittled by holy wars, colonization, and imperialism. With a population nearing one million, Marrakech is now a cultural center and microcosm for Morocco itself. Cultural variation is most apparent at Djemaa el Fna, one of the busiest market squares in Africa and...

Justice Denied

In Rudyard Kipling's short story, ‘The man who would be King’, ‘Brother’ Peachey Carnehan and ‘Brother’ Daniel Dravot, ‘gentleman’ loafers, poseurs, and adventurers, take off for Kafiristan. As they explain, although British India is a land that ‘isn't half worked out’, it is too much governed; the spread of law and administrative regulation cramps their ambition to be kings, sending them ‘beyond the Border’ equipped with their cache of Martini rifles. Carnehan and Dravot have served out their fourteen-year stint in the British army, having fought under Major-General Frederick Roberts during the second Anglo-Afghan war. In her book, Colonial Justice in British India, Elizabeth Kolsky is concerned with the threat that such low-born gents posed to imperial stability. While Kipling's short story, published in 1890, reflects the territorial expansion of British governance in India and its increased density, Kolsky challenges the received trajectory of British law and order as progressing from the legal chaos of the eighteenth century to the settled, state-centred norms of the nineteenth. She contends that lawlessness remained at the ‘very centre of the colonial project itself’; the persistence of lawlessness becomes evident through the ‘ordinary’ everyday acts of violence committed ‘by a mostly forgotten cast of European characters’. As in Kipling's tale, these forgotten characters of empire operate at the centre of Kolsky's well documented account.

The Making of the Images of Englishmen in Caroline Drama 1625-1642

This paper gives an account of the images of Englishmen and European foreigners in the English setting of Caroline drama, and provides cases in which Caroline dramatists present with the self-criticism new approaches to the depiction of Englishmen in relation to European foreigners. Exemplary cases are an English aristocrat in Spanish disguise in Richard Brome’s The Northern Lass (1629), a French dancing instructor in James Shirley’s The Ball (1632), and an English-born son of a Dutch immigrant in Henry Glapthorne’s The Hollander (1635). These three plays are suggestive of social and political issues that reflect on the alliance between England and its traditional enemies such as Spain, France and Netherlands. The national traits of characters are determined by international affairs swinging between the breakdown of the alliance and its restoration. These three plays are no longer rooted in the Elizabethan xenophobic and patriotic sentiment, and foreign characters are more fully accepted into Caroline social life. The satire previously aimed at European foreigners is now turned against the folly of English characters. It works as the device that reassesses the Englishman’s self-image and his notion of the European other, and that has the effect of challenging the conventional concept of stock national traits. Both English and European characters are portrayed satirically. The new type of satirical drama serves to redefine the self-deceptive nature of English national identity, and to present European foreigners in a less prejudiced comparison with Englishmen.

Nicole, Papa, Blackpool Tower, the Eiffel Tower and Thierry Henry

The article is concerned with the deployment of European (especially French) characters and motifs in British screen advertising from the 1970s to the present and the means whereby particular products (cars, cosmetics, drinks) are designated as French. It is especially concerned with the appropriation of French films in ads, through direct pillaging of found footage and through imitation, and the gestural use of French films to designate, more generally, shifting perceptions of the foreignness and difference of Europe. Advertising, it is acknowledged, also has its own trends and cycles, pursued regardless of external factors, within brands and amongst agencies. Screen advertising (Stella and VW) increasingly permeates the production, distribution and exhibition of cinema in Britain.

So!apbox: editorial essays: Strategy as practice?

Strategy is supposed to lead an organization through changes and shifts to secure its future growth and sustainable success, and it has become the master concept with which to address CEOs of contemporary organizations and their senior managers. Its talismanic importance can hardly be overstated. Thus, strategic management is increasingly understood as the task of the top management team. While seminal works on strategy bear the imprint of modernist rationality (Ansoff, 1965; Porter, 1980), there have been numerous contributions to the strategy literature that can be characterized as more reflexive and critical (e.g. Clegg et al., 2004). More expressly sociological in nature, they have placed emphasis on, inter alia, how power and politics shape the strategies that emerge (Mintzberg, 1987; Pettigrew, 1985); the strategic choices made (Child, 1972); the language games that constitute strategy (Barry and Elmes, 1997); as well as how strategy is best understood through interpretative approaches (Schwenk, 1989), structuration theory (Whittington, 1992) or epistemology (Knights and Morgan, 1991). Such works set out an alternative to the neat assumptions of ubiquitous rationality underpinning orthodox strategy. Most recently, the so-called strategy as practice approach has claimed to integrate earlier epistemologically and ontologically more reflexive positions into a new orthodoxy. The new approach is one that is very much couched in European characters ( Jarzabkowski, 2003, 2004; Samra-Fredericks, 2003; Whittington, 1996, 2002, 2003, 2004), and is clearly to be understood as a systematic critique of orthodox, hegemonic, and mainly North American, or North American-inspired, strategy research. In this essay, we seek to advance the current debate in the field of strategy in several respects: first, we discuss the intellectual genesis of the strategy as practice STRATEGIC ORGANIZATION Vol 6(1): 83–99 DOI: 10.1177/1476127007087154 Copyright ©2008 Sage Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore) http://so.sagepub.com